Packers can score points if they find a sense of consistency
Ok, it's Week 7. All of "The Green Bay Packers are a young team, so they're going to have growing paints" talking points have been well established and they've even been proven up to this point. Yet, they still matter because the Packers have yet to get over the youthful hump. The team has been […]
Ok, it's Week 7. All of "The Green Bay Packers are a young team, so they're going to have growing paints" talking points have been well established and they've even been proven up to this point. Yet, they still matter because the Packers have yet to get over the youthful hump.
The team has been extremely inconsistent on both sides of the ball, but primarily on offense. Ever since scoring a season-high 38 points against the Chicago Bears in Week 1, the Packers offense has seen its scoring output dwindle every single week but one – when they scored 20 points against the Detroit Lions in Week 4's blowout loss.
The offense simply hasn't been good enough to score points in a league built on offense. What makes it even more painful is most of the struggles have come via the Packers' own accord.
"Just a lot of inconsistent play," Packers head coach Matt LaFleur told reporters when asked what he noticed during the bye week evaluations. "There's certain things that, as a play caller, you are disappointed with yourself in terms of putting guys in certain situations, and then it's just been very choppy. We haven't been able to get into a consistent rhythm. The early down execution has put us into some get-back-on-track situations and that's where we've really struggled…
"… So I just, I think, the overall consistency, because it takes all 11… it could be one person and it throws you off rhythm. So we've really tried to stress the importance of staying dialed in, play-in and play-out… if not all 11 are dialed in on on their responsibilities, then you're probably not going to have success in this league."
As someone who covers the team, it's been frustrating to watch. So it's easy to think the Packers, themselves, along with the fanbase, are currently simmering their way to a boiling point if things don't improve over the next few weeks. And we aren't talking about turning into a top-5 offense, or anything: Just become an average offense that can at least move the ball up and down the field a few times per game.
The Packers should be in good shape if they can ever find that rhythm and that's because they're one of the best red zone offenses in the NFL. They just don't get down there very often.
The Packers are currently scoring touchdowns at a touchdown 62.5% clip in the red zone, which is the sixth-best rate in the NFL. They have converted 10-of-16 attempts, but it's the 16 attempts that represent the problem dynamic: that's tied for the seventh-fewest attempts out of all 32 teams.
"I think our red zone offense has been really good early-on and we just need to get more opportunities to get the ball down there," Packers quarterback Jordan Love told reporters Wednesday. "Because I think once we get down there, we're executing pretty well, right now."
The objective is clear and the team knows what it needs to do in order to accomplish the goal. It's just the question of "Can they do it?", at this point.
If they can, there will certainly be an uptick in both output and points on the board. It's just more of how long it takes them to get there, than anything.
